Trickster's Choice Read Online Free PDF Page A

sit about decoding reports by herself, feeling underfoot and alone, until her parents remembered there were other people in the world. It had happened before. The prospect was not enticing.

    Her parents needed time to themselves. As it was, George would probably have to visit the spy Landfall, especially if the man was tucked away in a secret room for safety. It also occurred to Aly that she might not like the result when Da learned she had tried to enlist her mother’s help. It was very hard to make Da angry, but that might just do it.

    They deserve time alone, together, Aly told herself virtuously. I will give it to them.

    She got up from the table and went to her father’s office. If she applied herself, she could finish the rest of the correspondence that evening and leave her father with nothing to distract him when he returned. In the morning, she would sail her boat, the
Cub,
down the coast to Port Legann. She would even leave a note so that her parents wouldn’t worry. She often sailed alone, and winter in the south had been fairly mild. The sea might be a little rough, but she could handle it. If the weather turned bad, she would take shelter with the dozens of families she knew along the coast. And it was early enough in the year that pirates wouldn’t have started their raids yet.

    She would sail to Port Legann, visit Lord Imrah and his tiny, vivid wife, and give her parents the time alone that they deserved. She would also avoid being turned into her mother’s project. Alanna’s energy was a fearsome thing. A few days before her mother left for the north, Aly would return to bid her farewell. If a tiny voice whispered at the back of her brain that she was running away, Aly ignored it. Her plan really was for everyone’s good.

    She finished the decoding and paperwork, leaving her summaries in a neat stack on her father’s desk. That night she packed a small trunk. As the sun first drew a silver line along the horizon, she carried it down to the
Cub
. By the time the sun was clear of coastal hills, Aly was plowing through the waves, shivering a little in her coat. She imagined the result when her mother found her note on the dining room table. If her mother’s past reactions were any indication, she would curse the air blue that Aly had dodged her plans. Then Da would return, Aly’s parents would bill and coo like turtledoves for three weeks, and by the time Aly returned from Port Legann, both of them would be in a better frame of mind, ready to welcome their only girl-child. Aly liked it. This was a
good
plan.

    For two days she enjoyed her sail and the solitude. Shortly after dawn on her third day out she rounded Griffin Point and found she had miscalculated. A clutch of pirate ships, their captains not aware that the raiding season had yet to begin, had destroyed the town that lined Griffin Cove. Aly tried to turn the
Cub,
but the wind was against her. They surrounded her before she could get her ship out of the cove.

    By midmorning a mage was stitching a leather slave collar around her neck. It would tighten mercilessly if she tried to escape beyond the range of the mage who held its magical key. The captain of the ship that had sunk her beloved
Cub
watched as the mage finished the collar. “I want her head shaved,” he snapped. “Nobody’s going to buy a blue-haired slave.”

    Three weeks later, Rajmuat on the island of Kypriang, capital of the Copper Isles

    Aly huddled in the corner of the slave pen farthest from the door, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees, forehead on her arms. She was barefoot. Her hair was now only the finest red-gold stubble. She was dressed in a rough, sleeveless, undyed tunic, with a rag that served her for a loincloth. The pirates’ leather collar had been exchanged for one that would keep her in the Rajmuat slave market until she’d been sold.

    After three weeks, two of them on a filthy, smelly ship, her body was skinnier and striped